


Twenty through twenty-eight

by julad



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Imported, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:29:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julad/pseuds/julad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just imported, cleanup and tagging needed</p>
    </blockquote>





	Twenty through twenty-eight

**Author's Note:**

> Just imported, cleanup and tagging needed

i suck, hate assignment, gah.

therefore, schmoop. sort of half betaed by the insomniac [](http://ragingpixie.livejournal.com/profile)[**ragingpixie**](http://ragingpixie.livejournal.com/), who only saw half of it, so pretty much a total draft.

**Twenty through Twenty-Eight**

 

_Edit: be warned, little spoilers for S4!_

**20.**

When Justin turned twenty, there was still no furniture in the loft, and still not a lot of money to spare.

Brian was stressed and had a temper like a permanently lit fuse, so Justin didn't mention the b-word at all. They ate Chinese takeout on the floor, and then Brian sighed, kissed him softly, and went back to his computer.

 

* * *

**21.**

Things were a lot better a year later. They got high at Babylon and fucked in the back room, a typical Thursday night.

"Say 'Happy Birthday'," Justin said as Brian maneuvered him into the elevator. Brian licked his throat. "No, _say_ it," he insisted. "I got presents from everyone else, you give me one too."

In the end, Brian threw him onto the bed and spanked him twenty-one times.

 

* * *

**22.**

The next year, he had a plan. He set the alarm an hour early, dragged Brian out of bed by his hair, sat him down at the dining table and waited until he had his full attention. "Today is my birthday," he said, speaking slowly and enunciating carefully. "Your obligations regarding this occasion begin in thirty minutes' time, when you will join me in the shower and supply me with not less than two orgasms of better-than-average quality." Brian looked confused and hungover, but Justin was well aware that Brian Kinney only looked pitiful when it served his purposes. Mercy was wasted on him. "On your lunch break, you will go down to Lindsay's gallery and buy me the charcoal sketch she knows I want. You will finish work at six and take me to dinner at Giardinelli's at seven." Brian made pathetic noises and held out both hands for the coffee pot, which Justin was holding hostage to his good behaviour. Justin held it up higher, and raised his voice for good measure. "At dinner, you will give me my present with a plain card, on which you will have written, 'Dear Justin, Happy Birthday, Love Brian.' You will be attentive, courteous and charming to me until nine o'clock this evening, at which time you are freed from the obligations set forth herein. Are there any questions?"

"Coffee?" Brian said, squinting up at him.

Justin put the pot behind his back. "For the next ten minutes, the word 'coffee' means, 'Yes, Justin, I will do what you want.'"

Brian stared forlornly at his empty mug for seven whole minutes, and then held it out. "Coffee."

Justin's birthday went very well until nine o'clock that evening.

 

* * *

**23.**

"Fuck you," Brian said as soon as Justin opened his eyes. "I'm working late tonight."

"Fine," Justin said. "Have fun. I'll be going out."

After work he went to see Lindsay, who called Brian in tears, begging him to babysit until the next evening. "You remember my Great-aunt Lucinda," she insisted. "We threw a pool party at her house once, and you broke one of her crystal vases. Oh, Brian, I can't believe she's gone!"

Justin hid in the bathroom while Brian grudgingly collected the kids, and then he and Lindsay and Mel drove to Baltimore and got wasted at a series of increasingly grimy dyke bars.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Brian demanded, when Justin staggered in the door the next afternoon. Gus was sitting in a chair in the corner, and Brian was mopping chocolate milk off the floor.

"I woke up in a lesbian separatist commune," Justin began.

"I don't want to hear about it," Brian said, shuddering, and took the kids to the park while Justin slept off his hangover.

 

* * *

**24.**

Brian had to pick up Justin from the airport at five a.m. on his twenty-fourth birthday.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

Justin shook his head tiredly.

He had graduated into a 'minor employment slump,' as the government called it, or an economy that couldn't get a blowjob at the Liberty Baths, as Brian put it. He'd been working as a graphic designer for a rental car company for the past year, but the company had been forced to 'streamline their workforce.' Justin was applying for work further and further away from both Pittsburg and his dreams.

"It was a shitty job anyway," Brian said. "And Chicago sucks."

Justin buried his face in Brian's shoulder, and wished for the thousandth time that he wasn't too proud to work for Kinnetic.

Brian parked downtown and took him to breakfast at a cafe with a gorgeous view over the river. The food was wonderful, and Justin was starving, and Brian ordered nearly everything on the menu for him. When the bill came, Brian slapped his hand away from it.

"Shut the fuck up," he said when Justin started to object. "It's your fucking birthday present, if it makes you feel better."

Sated and sleepy, Justin leaned against Brian's back and let him pay. It did make him feel better, kind of.

 

* * *

**25.**

Twenty-five was another anticlimax, but a better one. Kinnetic was starting to go ballistic-- clients got jumpy in recessions, and Brian had picked them like cherries off the other agencies, but he had dozens of new campaigns to organise now that the economy was turning up. Justin had somehow found himself working for a company that ran a massive online wargame, and had to get three multimedia installations working for a trade show in a week's time.

Brian didn't say anything, and neither did Justin. They went to Babylon, drank, fucked, went home and kept working.

 

* * *

**26.**

Justin's twenty-sixth birthday happened while they were in Rome. Brian was on the mother of all shopping binges, high as a kite on credit card fumes, stoned out of his mind on labels, eyes glazed from doing too many hot Italian salesmen, so Justin wasn't really surprised to be presented with half a dozen glossy design books, a designer bookcase, designer sunglasses, designer suits, designer shirts, designer jeans, designer socks, designer underwear, designer ties, a designer leather jacket, a designer watch, designer glassware and designer cutlery. Brian had artistically arranged it all in a teetering stack in the middle of their hotel room, a postmodern monument to European consumerism.

"Oh, fuck," Justin said when he saw it.

"Happy Birthday!" Brian announced, beaming starry-eyed at his creation.

 

* * *

**27.**

If Justin had known that Mel's brother-in-law was exactly Brian's type, he never would have said, "sure, bring him along." The ensuing events were only ever referred to as "what happened at Justin's twenty-seventh." After that debacle, Justin decided to ignore Brian's thirty-ninth. He didn't buy anything, didn't say anything, didn't do anything special. He ordered pizza with extra pineapple so that Brian would want it, then put so much parmesan on it that Brian couldn't eat it.

Brian didn't take it well, which accelerated the deterioration of their relationship. It culminated in Justin having a torrid affair with a Belgian sculptor, and Brian kicking him out and installing a gorgeous Latino gogo dancer in the loft in his place. The dancer strutted around Babylon like the king of the universe until Justin smiled at Brian as they passed in the mens' room, and then things went back to normal.

 

* * *

**28.**

A week before Justin's twenty-eighth birthday, his mother was killed in a car accident. Brian somehow took care of everything without ever leaving Justin alone in a room. Months later, Justin was still finding out that it was Brian who had Uncle Rob paged at a conference in Harrisburg, Brian who arranged Molly's leave of abscence from Dartmouth, Brian who read the police reports and paid the estate taxes and filed the insurance claims.

Months later, it occured to Justin to wonder when the antique leather barber stool and mahogany easel had appeared by his favourite window. Brian shrugged, and Justin pulled out the credit card statements.

"Birthdays are bullshit," Brian said, when Justin tracked down the date.

"I know," Justin said, and hugged him for the longest time.


End file.
